There For You
by The Red Celt
Summary: Even with the entire galaxy falling apart, sometimes it's enough to know that there's someone who understands. FShep/Garrus minific.


After hours of oscillating between calibrating the guns and staring at the comm, as though he could make a message appear through sheer will, Garrus could no longer stand the sight of the console. He left the battery and wandered in a daze past the scattered people in the mess hall, their conversation light but desperately so, not really sure where he was going until he found himself opening the door to the lounge. He wondered if he should have a drink to take the edge off, but Shepard had already tapped him for the ground team on Tuchanka so he had to keep his senses sharp. It would be nice to get off the ship; the lulls between were driving him crazy with worry for his family. Well, what was left of it, anyway.

The last vidcomm message he'd received was from the hospital where his mother had been getting her treatments, ineffectual though they were. That one had been brutal, but he'd managed to keep the worst of the pain at bay by reminding himself that she hadn't even known him last time he'd gone to see her. Wasting away in a hospital surrounded by strangers was no way to live. That's what he kept telling himself, anyway, before the Reapers struck. Soon afterwards he'd flown to Menae to mount a defense, his sister and father left behind. It had been too long since he'd heard from them, and he couldn't shut his brain up about it anymore. Knowing anything would have been better than this, his remaining family having turned into Schrodinger's cat.

The black emptiness of space stretched out just past the observation window, infinite and cold and oddly comforting in its consistency. It was nice to know something would always remain constant no matter what, that would stand in the face of the Reapers destroying his homeworld and the lives of everyone he ever knew hanging in the balance.

Suddenly the weight of the past three years came crashing down on him and he staggered, barely making it to the couch before his knees gave out. His chest was tight, his throat constricted, and he knew then why other species cried. There were emotions that were so huge, so crippling in their intensity that to hold them inside was to risk being torn apart.

It was at that moment that the door behind him hissed open and he half turned to order the intruder away. All the death and betrayal and fighting against monstrous enemies and impossible odds had culminated in this one tidal wave of sorrow, and he couldn't bear to let anyone else see him like this.

Shepard stood in the doorway, probably poised to start slinging sarcasm at him, but whatever she saw on his face made her pause. With an answering sadness creeping across her normally stoic features, she made her way over to the couch. She was wearing a pair of old blue fatigues and her N7 hoodie, and somehow that stripped away the unmistakable aura of command she usually radiated and Garrus was faced with Jane Shepard, the woman, his best friend in the galaxy and the rock he'd anchored on for so long.

She sat down cross-legged beside him on the couch, her leg just touching his, not saying anything. She'd always known his mind—knew when to hand over a fresh heat sink, when he needed to save someone rather than kill him, when a joke would lighten his mood, and when to just be there. She turned to look at him and he saw empathy, not pity, in her eyes and he remembered then that of all the people on the ship, Shepard understood. Her family was long dead, the home where she'd grown up destroyed, and now her homeworld burned as well. Now it was she, as always, who was there to take some of his burden because she'd carried it herself for years—had buckled under the strain but had never broken.

She stared out at the void and took his hand in hers, rubbing little circles across the back with her thumb. He refused to keen and wail like a broken man, but he could allow himself to lean against her and hold her hand, taking comfort and giving it in turn. He squeezed her hand, trying to convey everything he wanted to say and knowing that it wasn't enough, but it didn't matter. She knew what he meant. She always did, and that was enough for him.


End file.
